Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales. In Norse Mythology, Gaiman fashions primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds; delves into the exploits of the deities, dwarves, and giants; and culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and the rebirth of a new time and people.

Neverwhere

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

Ready Player One

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

Good Omens

The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

Stardust

Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. One crisp October night, as they watch, a star falls from the sky, and Victoria promises to marry Tristran if he'll retrieve the star and bring it back for her. It is this promise that sends Tristran on the most unforgettable adventure of his life.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

It

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It's a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made 28 years ago calls them to reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city's children.

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces listeners to one of his most powerful creations: Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.

The Graveyard Book: Full-Cast Production

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family…

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. He is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie - magical, comforting, wise beyond her years - promised to protect him, no matter what.

The Handmaid's Tale: Special Edition

After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.

Good Omens: The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation

A full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s celebrated apocalyptic comic novel, with bonus length episodes and outtakes. According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday in fact. Just after Any Answers on Radio 4….Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield.

Dune

Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in digestible chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

The Stand

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1

This is the way the world ends. For the last time. A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great, red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

The Girl with All the Gifts

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her 'our little genius'. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells.

Artemis

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

In Smoke and Mirrors, Gaiman's imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders - where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under "Pest Control," and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks.

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction--stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013--as well as "Black Dog", a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.

Publisher's Summary

Now a STARZ® Original Series produced by FremantleMedia North America starring Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Emily Browning, and Pablo Schreiber.

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life.

But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow's best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and a rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.

Life as Wednesday's bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined. Soon Shadow learns that the past never dies . . . and that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.

What the Critics Say

"This full-cast performance of the tenth anniversary edition of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (think director's cut) is one of the most mesmerizing audio experiences ever.... Ron McLarty plays a randy, crusty old Odin disguised as a white-collar con man to perfection. Daniel Oreskes's Shadow, the hero who doesn't know quite what he is, is masterful. Oliver Wyman, who did Mad Sweeney the Leprechaun, is a genius. Hats in the air for the whole cast, a flawless production, and a tour de force of a tale." (AudioFile)

I am new to Neil Gaiman's work. I once tried to read a Sandman comic and felt utterly lost, so I gave up trying. His recent work on Doctor Who and my membership on Audible led me to pick this audio book. I'm not a big fan of full cast productions either. I like the idea of a single person reading the book... but after reading the criticism and researching the different versions of the book for myself, I decided to give this one a try.

It was fantastic.

The voice of Shadow is perfect... as is that of Mr. Wednesday. It really helps the book come alive. If I had read it or listened to a single person voicing it, I may have gotten sick of the tangents that Gaiman follows, but since I had the numerous voices as sign posts on the journey, it really did help. They do a great job of setting the tone.

This book is like a dream you don't want to wake up from. It makes so much sense, yet if you were to try to explain it to someone, it wouldn't. If you expect something from it, you may be disappointed, but if you just let it take you on a journey and let your mind wander with it, you will enjoy every minute of it. Neil Gaiman knows how to get you to feel for his characters by making them a part of the familiar. This really is something I could see myself dreaming.

I really loved this story. My kids have been telling me for years to read it, and I finally got this edition to listen to. I can't imagine any part of it I'd hope to miss, and am not sure what the parts were in this edition that weren't in the previously released version, but again, I can't imagine I'd want anything left out.

I'm usually not a fan of "cast" performances on audiobooks. I like a single storyteller. However, this was really an outstanding performance - they did a truly great job.

This isn't a review about the story American Gods; others will do that. What I felt important to review here was the superb production presented by this very talented group of narrators. The characterization- depth, realism and building of, and ability to relate to -in American Gods is very well done, but the performance of the narrators brings them further, adding an even more complex and integrated layer of emotion and connection.

The main narrator is easy to listen to and warm to the tale- I felt the narrator was telling me a story of his experience rather than a recitation of another's work.

And of Neil Gaiman's own short passages, sprinkled thru-ought: an excellent lift from the main story, giving each break an ethereal yet distinctive separation from the main story.

I haven't finished listening to this yet, but wanted to weigh in about the narration. If you are one of George Guidall's many fans, by all means get his production. But when I first searched this book on Audible and found only Guidall's version, I chose not to get it because have never cared for his voice or performances. That is not meant as a criticism of this much-honored narrator, it is strictly personal taste and preference.

I like the use of different readers and in general think all four of these do a good job. This is an *extremely* dense and confusing book, and hearing different voices, at least for me, creates welcome breaks.

Whether this production will wind up being worth the heavy going is still up for debate with me. Gaiman's Preface to this anniversary edition characterizes it as "big, odd, and meandering." It's certainly all of those. He also acknowledges that some of his fans "really hate it." But there is a lot of interesting stuff in the book, especially for people who enjoy the off-center, the surreal--and the ineffable.

What did you like best about American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition (A Full Cast Production)? What did you like least?

Any additional comments?

Imagine, if you will, a gilded box, a beautifully etched and sumptuously appointed golden jewelry box. By the sheer beauty of the box, you just know. You know that whatever such a lovely box holds within itself must be of inordinate beauty, of breathtaking value. When you gently, carefully open the box to view its treasure, you gasp. That, dear friends, would not be a gasp of awe and amazement, it would be a gasp of shock for sitting just as pretty as you please is a bubble gum machine cheap plastic ring of the black spider Halloween variety where you expected a ring of great value.

That is American Gods.

The gilded jewelry box is the beautiful, engaging writing of Neil Gaiman whose vast literary talent cannot be denied. The plastic black spider ring is the actual story Neil has spun. It is as if Neil spelunked into his most shadowy places brought up what he found, and painted his word canvas from that dark material. With his typical generosity, the fleshed out this book’s characters of which only one – Shadow struck me as remotely likable. Mind you, I have a penchant for flawed characters and typically find myself aligning with a likable villain over a lily white Pollyanna hero.

While Neil did do a great deal of research into the human imagined gods of the past, blending them nicely into the present time, his tale was colored, flavored and dripping with his own personal viewpoints on a range of social and moral topics which felt agenda driven. Of course, as he is the author, he has every right to do so, but on more than one occasion, I felt as if I had figuratively bitten into a large bite of pecan pie only to cringe upon biting down upon a hidden shell in the topping. Not being a shy violet, when I confess that there were certain events within the book that were too graphic for me in content and in language that is not a small statement.

This is the first time my love for beautiful writing has warred with my equal love of a good story. Perhaps that is the reason that I continued to listen to the entire audiobook hoping that détente would be achieved between my two loves. That, sadly, did not happen.With that said, the narration was exceptionally good, and the entire cast was delightful.

I feel so alone in my opinion after so many zillion glowing reviews. But this book either left me cold or sometimes irritated me.The endless fantasy historical mythology told by characters of whom I cared little. The repetitive dream sequences that were just a lot of symbolic images that went nowhere. Characters who talked and talked about other characters who were never in the actual plot. Most of the time I couldn't place where the characters were when they talked with each other. Which was a lot of talk.I have listened to Neil Caiman's Graveyard in the past and I loved it. This was a big mess of a disappointment.

Gaiman is one of those authors for who I simply buy the hardbound when it comes out and I read and re-read these over the years. I was thrilled to find this revised production version of it on Audible.com. I may be prejudiced but I found this audio book immaculately performed and amongst the top of the books I've listened to.

I really enjoyed the variety of narrators-with a novel this involved, a multi cast interpretation is the only way to do it justice.Yes, it's long and quite complex, especially if you've not read it previously but it's well worth the time and any effort. If you're a fan of fantasy fiction, American gods should fascinate you.

A caveat: It may take a while to get into..because it is long and as a bit convoluted, you might not be grabbed in the first chapter..Gaiman develops his novels slowly-they creep up on you. I hope readers who are unfamiliar with his work don't give up right away..this book is a synopsis of past gods and goddesses from our ancestors and their plight in the world of technology.

For me, this is a book thats worth reading, and re reading again-I know I'll be listening again in a couple of years.

I so wanted to Love this book its Neil Gaiman I really should love it but unfortunately this will not be on my list of favorite Gaiman novels. I liked Anansi Boys much better maybe it is because I liked Fat Charlie so much. Part of me did like Shadow though because; how confusing this must have been for him he is just along for the ride for the majority of this book.

Some major research had to have been done to find out about all the different Gods and of course Neil’s writing is great but I just couldn’t connect with this book it was way too easy to put it down/stop listening. There are parts that were interesting and parts that are cringe worthy.

I did like the second half of this book better than the first, but it still didn’t make me fall in love with it and then the end (prologue) got confusing again. I still love Neil and not liking one book out of so many is in no way going to make me stop reading him or change the fact that he is one of my favorite authors. In fact this makes me want to go back and read Anansi Boys again now that I have a little more background than I had when I read it the first time.

The concept of gods only existing because people believe in them is not new but the way Neil tells a story may be. There is so much going on in this book that it is hard to review or try to explain. There is a lot more sex and swearing in this book than I expected; yes, yes I know the gods are sexual beings but there are some very graphic scenes that I felt were over the top.

As I said earlier it is Neil Gaiman I feel awful giving this the rating I am giving and maybe after I’ve stepped away from it my rating may change or maybe someday I will came back and revisit this and see if my opinion changes.

I listened to the 10th Anniversary Full Cast production of this one I enjoyed all the narrators and thought it was very well done. Narrated by, Dennis Boutsikaris, Daniel Oreskes, Ron McLarty, Sarah Jones and Neil himself and many more they mention at the end but this was all they listed on audible.

Not a bad book, but not the glorious triumph of writing that other readers hyped it to be (those readers probably enjoy The Catcher in the Rye--my least favorite book ever). I enjoyed American Gods, but not enough to recommend it to anyone other than a serious Neil Gaiman fan (but they probably already have it).

I think I heard Gaiman appropriately use the word "meandering" while describing American Gods. I prefer a bit more structure to a story--not rigid formula, but more than a loosely-bound collection of things that happened. This style perhaps should have stayed in his graphic novels.

[Possible SPOILERS in this paragraph...] The twists were almost all immediately obvious--especially the big one, which was an early story-killer for me. As a result, I rarely got excited about what might happen, or felt consequences would matter. The protagonist's reaction to everything was so naive, I couldn't really see him as a real person.

Then, it got all artsy-fartsy with metaphysical philosophy, symbolism & that other stuff that feels like a cop-out when it's used an as explanation without clear parameters. "It happened, bcuz magic, bro." Yes, the universe exists on a single blade of grass... I get it.

It's an entertaining tale with some interesting characters, but felt like more of a shell than a story. I don't regret getting it, but couldn't urge anyone else to do the same.